Arctic wolf

The Arctic wolf

”The Arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos), also known as the Melville Island wolf, is a subspecies of gray wolf native to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, from Melville Island to Ellesmere Island. It is a medium-sized subspecies, distinguished from the northwestern wolf by its smaller size, its whiter coloration, its narrower braincase, and larger carnassials”

Behaviour

The Arctic wolf is relatively unafraid of people, and can be coaxed to approach people in some areas.[10] It has occasionally acted aggressively toward humans. Otto Sverdrup wrote that during the Fram expedition, a pair of wolves attacked one of his teammates, who defended himself with a skiing pole.[11] In 1977, a pair of scientists were approached by six wolves on Ellesmere Island, with one animal leaping at one of the scientists and grazing a cheek. A number of incidents involving aggressive wolves have occurred in Alert, Nunavut, where the wolves have lived in close proximity to the local weather station for decades and become habituated to humans.[12]

n the wild, Arctic wolves’ primarily prey on muskoxen and Arctic hares. They have also been found to prey on lemmings (Dicrostonyx groenlandicus), Arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus), birds and beetles. It has been also found that Arctic wolves scavenge through garbage. This sort of food source will not always be found in the Arctic wolves diet because of regional and seasonal availability.[19] Sometimes there is debate whether the muskox or the Arctic hare is the primary prey for the hare-wolf-muskox predator-prey system. Studies provide evidence that the muskoxen are indeed their primary prey because wolf presence and reproduction seems to be higher when muskox is more available than higher hare availability.[20] More supporting evidence suggests that muskoxen provide long-term viability and other ungulates do not appear in wolves diet.[13]